Day 41 - Monday, May 11th, 2026: Feeling nostalgic!

And I posted about it!

[ Bluesky / Threads / X / Mastodon / Tumblr / Instagram / Pixelfed ]

A closed Crimson Red and Black Nintendo DS Lite handheld console resting on a dark surface. The vibrant, metallic red top shell is illuminated by green and purple ambient light.

With the move comes change of scenery, so it makes sense that I'm craving comfort. So: out comes the DS Lite! Loved this system as a kid, and still love this system now. Didn't help that I tried to clean out my digital photos earlier too. But it's change for the better, therefore I'm allowing myself to drown in mid-00s games!

Packing isn't going all too well, it's hard to decide what to keep and what to pack for the next two months... My monitors need to get packed, for sure; I need to have this desk empty by next week.

Which brings me to the laptops. Chromebook is easy! And so is the Work laptop. But my other laptop (a ThinkPad T490) that's been running Windows 11... I simply don't want that to be my main "powerful" device. Or rather, I don't want to rely on Windows. But also running Fedora on that sounds too... boring? Tumbleweed's a little too hinky as a primary driver, Debian too stable. Elementary OS or Linux Mint sound like they'd fit the bill, but admittedly neither felt right. So I picked Ubuntu, since that got a new release. I've got a soft spot for Ubuntu, despite being very aware of all its flaws. It's recent and fresh, but doesn't need daily updates. GNOME is filled out with extensions so I'm not missing tray icons. Great fonts, clean UI, and decent performance. So I'll be daily driving an Ubuntu ThinkPad! Plus, it'll allow me to keep tabs on Ubuntu's progression as well.

An open Nintendo DS Lite displaying the Tetris DS title screen on the top screen and the main menu on the bottom touch screen. The console is set against a dark background with moody purple atmospheric lighting.

On ZFS, of course. I plan to use this system only occasionally (as in, once a month) so the cadence of updates paired with a resilient filesystem should make for a smooth ride!

I've also gotten Taco Bell for the first time in months. And I'd like to do a brief review. (Something I'd like to keep consistent moving forward!)

Rating system:
Would get again!
Tasty.
Okay.
No thanks.

Leftover rating:
Great!
Likely okay.
Goop/Bad.

(Pretty self-explanatory, I think.)

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of any of these items. Fortunately, Taco Bell has images so I'll link each item below!

Diablo Dusted Crispy Nuggets:

By far my favorite of the order, and what a surprise! Chicken nuggets from Taco Bell? Pretty good, as it turns out! Quite crispy, and that Diablo dust is divine! I highly recommend dipping them in the Jalapeño Honey Mustard.

Would get again + Great as leftovers!

Jalapeño Honey Mustard:

Honey mustard with a kick. Highly recommended, this was delicious!

Would get again.

Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch:

This sauce was supposed to be spicy, but I personally didn't get that. It was fine enough as ranch, I suppose, but I'm not the biggest ranch fan.

Simply okay.

Chocolate Fudge & Caramel Empanadas:

These I also adored! The caramel empanada is like a fried, pancake-wrapped Werther's. But whoa, the chocolate one! Same crispy, tasty outside, but that filling is divine. Flavor-wise it's reminiscent of Nutella, but the texture is closer to a dense chocolate mousse. I didn't expect to like this one, but I ended up loving it.

However, they make for terrible leftovers. The shell dries out and becomes hard and brittle. It goes from a delicious crispy-fried pancake to a sad, crumbly cracker. Taste remains delightful though!

Would get again + Bad leftovers.

Zab’s Chicken Ranch Nacho Fries:

Fries? In my Taco Bell? It's more likely than you think!

These were pretty decent. I quite liked the taste of everything, but keep in mind that everything's mixed together and the fries get soggy quick! And they make for terrible leftovers, resembling nothing more than a colorful glob of paint.

Tasty + Goop.

Doritos Cheesy Gordita Crunch - Nacho Cheese:

An old favorite. Delicious! I love the cheese-stuffed double-shell deal they've got going on. So good, in fact, that I had no leftovers. 🫣

However, it's a pretty boring item outside of that, so I probably would get something else next time.

Tasty + Not sure how they'd fare as leftovers.

I've got no Notes & Thoughts this time around, but I do have one interesting news article: Nintendo will raise the price of the Switch 2 by $50 ($449.99 -> $499.99) on September 1st, 2026. So luckily, no sudden price increases like the Xbox, or Sony's "Hey, we're raising the prices in a week!". I don't like price increases, but I feel like this hike was respectfully done.

Nothing further as I've been occupied with packing and other household chores!

I didn't start writing this blog post on the ThinkPad, but I did finish writing it here! It works phenomenally well. 🦝

Here's a screenshot as proof, from my mostly-unfinished setup:

A desktop screenshot of Ubuntu running the GNOME desktop environment with two Google Chrome windows tiled side-by-side. The left window shows a Blogger post editor titled "Day 41 - Monday, May 11th, 2026: Feeling nostalgic!", containing a food review of Taco Bell items. The right window displays an official news release regarding price revisions for the Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch Online memberships, effective September 1, 2026. The top bar shows various system icons and the date Monday, May 11, 07:59.

Written at 1778500521.

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Day 12 - April 12th, 2026: Causes and clearing out.

So first things first: I think I've figured out what makes me feel super nauseated sometimes! It'd happen occasionally in the mornings, and I always figured that maybe some leftovers I'd eaten had somehow gone bad.

Turns out: it's the Starbucks creamers I'd use occasionally in my morning coffees! Specifically, the Caramel Macchiato Inspired Creamer and Brown Sugar Shaken Espresso Inspired Creamer. And it was so difficult to figure out, because it doesn't kick in immediately. I'll have a tasty little coffee treat, and then an hour or two later I'll get these waves of nausea, incredibly bloating and cramps, and just a general feeling of malaise. (Plus some weird jitters, which I imagine is the caffeine making things worse.)

As for why... well, I'm not entirely sure. None of the ingredients stood out to me as "particularly bad". My best guess is that it's the very high amount of sugar. Roughly 1/3rd is sugar by volume. (5 grams of sugar per 15 milliliter/gram serving.) Considering I generally used 60 grams of creamer (with 100-120 milliliters of dairy-free milk and a 6-cup Moka Pot), that's 20 grams of sugar! I am known to have a sweet tooth, but generally those are foods. So the sudden (liquid) sugar rush must be triggering a "get out" response in my stomach. A shame, since I liked their taste, but wowee I feel bad right now!

Speaking of coffee: I'm finally reducing my intake, properly. No more morning and afternoon coffees. I'll save coffee as a special little treat. Perhaps the constant caffeine has left me feeling drained most days. It'll be a rough few weeks, but ultimately it'll be for the better! (Or so I hope.)

2 jars of oats standing atop and oven. The one on the left has a yellow lid, and the cocoa and peanut butter mixture looks quite brown. The jar on the right has a blue lid, and the mixture has a slight pastel blue hue to it.

And I did make two overnight oat jars. On the left is a cocoa & peanut butter one, and the blue-lidded one is simple blueberry! I don't yet know if they're any good. I'm a little worried about the cocoa & PB jar, since I think I put too much cocoa powder and made it too bitter, despite adding lots of honey. I'll have to report back, and post the recipes if they're good. I've been on a really bad "overnight oats" kick lately. Easy to make, satisfying to eat, and they help with the pastry cravings I get so often.

I've also finally gone through the tabs on my phone (60+) and will be adding them as notes and thoughts. Then, I'll be playing some Goat Simulator and try to get that BFF achievement!

Oh, and I did export my Steam wishlist (100+ games), and I'm going through them to find (and remove) games with broken achievements. I don't mind not getting 100% on some games, but I hate when games have broken/unfixed achievements! (Such as multiplayer-only achievements in a game whose servers have shut down. That's silly!)

Notes:

- Atuin. I've heard a lot of good things about this! A very straightforward install on Fedora, although it'll take a lot of using to get a good feel for it. If you're thinking of installing this too, make sure to read the installation guide! I'll be using ZSH and Alacritty. Perhaps I should write a simple blog post, too?

- Losing the Signal by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. I was never a BlackBerry user, so getting some insight into their history seems valuable! Added to my To-Read list.

- Peter Pan Syndrome. Good to know there's a term for this.

- Yaupon tea. I'd never heard of this, but it sounds intriguing! I love teas, and have been a big fan of yerba mate for a while. I'll have to try this soon! (Despite wanting to reduce my caffeine intake, haha!)

- I found this awesome (pun intended) GitHub page called "Awesome Wayland", full of nifty Wayland(-related) resources! I've bookmarked it, and I reckon I'll reference it often. (Since my machines are all pretty much Wayland-exclusive at this point.)

- OpenAlternative: A site to help you find open source alternatives to the programs you might be using currently. Another indispensable resource! It'll take me a while to comb through this (and I don't use many proprietary applications), but this is incredibly useful to anyone in the F(L)OSS world!

- Nivs' Blog, and specifically this post. Recommend giving their posts a read, there's a lot of genuinely interesting stuff there!

- The Death Clock: a clock that has a countdown timer with the (estimated) seconds you've got left to live. So incredibly morbid, but I love it! It can also be a regular clock. It's a $79.90 pre-order right now (ouch!), but this is too cool to pass up or not share.

- The SmartCard Ghost (Gen 3). A thin, card-shaped tracker that works with both Apple's Find My and Google's Find Hub. What's neat is that it charges wirelessly! It's a little pricey at $39.99 for one, but the 3-pack seems like a decent value (and would make for a good gift!) I don't use any trackers right now, and while I'm not known to lose my stuff, I'd like the extra insurance this would/could add!

This shows the terminal output of fastfetch piped into lolcat. It's rainbowy text.

- Dotacat, a Rust reimplementation of Lolcat. It makes your terminal output all rainbow-y. I love lolcat, since it makes things so much more fun! (And it's probably why I set up my blog to look similarly, haha!) Also, I adore the answer to "Why the name?"; "Because Dota is better than LoL (According to people - I play neither)"

- Taskwarrior-TUI is a super cool terminal program that allows you to manage to-dos and tasks from the terminal!

A screenshot of the terminal showing cbonsai output, which looks like a little 2D bonsai tree, in ASCII.

- And another cool terminal program: cbonsai. Perhaps less productive than the previously-mentioned program. But computing is supposed to be fun, right?

- And speaking of having fun: Chiaki-ng. It's a program that allows PlayStation Remote Play on devices that aren't a PS Portal or a smartphone. Think a laptop, so you can play PlayStation games in another room. Or more importantly; on a Steam Deck! My Wi-Fi might be too slow, but I can't wait to give this a try!

- The Reversal Icon Theme looks incredibly good. I want to install it, but it requires running a script which I'm not a big fan of. I prefer manually placing the files in the .icons folder (such as in the case of Bibata Rainbow, my current cursor!)

Thoughts:

- Attie, despite its controversy, sounded pretty interesting. I'm on the waitlist, and curious to see how it shakes out if/when I get accepted. Attie seems very much hated by the Bluesky community, and is one of the most-blocked accounts on the platform... Ouch!

- Randomly remembered PushBullet from my long-gone Android days. Seems like it's still around, but in maintenance mode. I suppose between LocalSend, KDE Connect, Edge Drop, and Blip, there hasn't been much reason to stick to PushBullet.

- I should get the CCNP certification. Not having any certifications (or code) is severely hurting my ability to get into IT. And I have to start somewhere, right? (If you're looking for a junior sysadmin with Linux experience, let me know!)

- I seriously need to get a YubiKey! For both added security and convenience. Despite using 2FA everywhere I can (and have done so for ages), I've never gotten a key like this before. Perhaps this'd make a good Christmas gift? (Wink wink, nudge nudge!)

- I ran across BB, which from what I understand, is a program that visualizes audio output. (Yes, yes, I'll mention Cava shortly!) What caught me off-guard was the "Requirements" section: "This demo requires computer at least as fast as 486/33 with coprocesor [sic]. But speed of 486/66 or pentium is highly recomended [sic] (especially for hight [sic] resolution SVGA modes). " Can I make this run on a modern machine? Sounds like a fun project!

A screenshot of Cava, an audio visualizer. It displays orange bars (corresponding to the frequencies). In this case, the background is dark grey, and the bars themselves are orange.

- Naturally this requires a shout-out to Cava!

- And speaking of audio, I'm swapping back to Spotify for a while. Two main reasons:

1) My YouTube Premium trial is running out. The individual cost was raised to $15.99, and that's more than I'm willing to spend at this time. I'll likely set up a Family plan, since that'll help alleviate the cost a bit.

2) YouTube Music can be oddly buggy when it has no access to internet. On my 1-hour long commute, I drive through several areas with no cell service. YouTube Music will often "forget" my like/thumbs-up when disconnecting and reconnecting, or not save it at all when the connection is too spotty. I've "lost" some songs this way, unfortunately. And despite playing from the "Downloads" section, it seems like it prefers to phone home when it can. I had no such issues on Spotify when I used it. (Although Spotify will show/hide the "Start Radio" button when connecting/disconnecting, causing the UI [and more critically, the Like/+ Button] to jump around wildly.)

- Speaking of Taskwarrior-TUI, a challenge I've been wanting to try for ages: GUI-less computing! I want to try running a terminal-only setup for a month or so. Relying only on the command line!

- I need to join Ubuntu Pro and, essentially, "figure out what it's about." I know Ubuntu is massive in the server/commercial space, and while I've used Ubuntu a lot over the years, I've never used Ubuntu Pro.

- And lastly, I should probably also join Coursera. If anything, just to hone my skills.

As always, none of these links/programs are sponsored! I like to highlight things I find interesting. And no affiliate links, either. Just clean, direct-to-item links.

Phew, another huge post. On to Goat Simulator!